Petition
by BookwormBaby2580
Summary: A story of smiles and tears, of giving up or holding on. Jacob/Bella one-shot


**Thanks to Stephenie Meyer for creating characters we love to play with, and so very, very much to NixHaw for fixing my dumbs and letting me steal her words for the summary, and for being truly wonderful all around.**

* * *

**Petition**

Bella lay awake in the darkened bedroom, trying to motivate herself to get out of bed. She didn't have to work tonight, but there were errands she could run. There was dry-cleaning to be retrieved and the pantry could do with some restocking. If she took her time, her chores might eat up two, even three hours.

Not enough.

She slid her fingers down the side of the bed and worked them between the mattress and the box spring. Just a little ways, just until her fingertips met the edges of the pages she knew were hidden there. The edges of the pages that had once been crisp and sharp, but had been feathered and softened by weeks of surreptitious prodding in the dark of the lonely bedroom.

They were comforting, those pages. They were the product of months of fretting, weeks of deliberating, and one long meeting with a lawyer friend. Now she had them, and all she lacked was nerve.

She was going to do it, though. A woman could only tolerate the misery and stagnation for so long. That was all that could be said about her situation now. Misery. Stagnation. She couldn't fix the misery, but she could at least start to move again.

Still, it was a frightening word. Divorce. When she saw it in her head it was in big, block letters, all capitals, black and ominous. The papers she was fondling phrased it more gently: Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.

But her marriage had dissolved a long time ago.

It hadn't always been bad. She rolled onto her back and let herself remember when she had fallen in love with Jacob, before Chloe, before responsibility, before reality. She had met Jacob in high school and had been instantly charmed by his warm brown eyes and glossy ponytail, by the contrast of his bright white teeth against his bronze skin when he smiled. He had smiled a lot back then. It had seemed as though his face had been formed with a smile already in place, and it took a conscious effort to remove it. Bella had fallen in love with his smile.

Her father hadn't liked him. His father hadn't liked her. There had been an argument a few years back, though how many years and what it had been over, no one could seem to remember. But the bad feelings lingered. Bella hadn't been allowed to bring Jacob home, and when she went to his house his father watched them beadily and muttered under his breath. But that had only made them more determined to be together. They were Romeo and Juliet, and they would capitulate to neither their feuding families nor to their ill-fated stars.

Bella remembered summer nights when they had both sneaked out of bed and met on the reservation, finding refuge in the Wildes' barn or in the cellar of the hardware store, because the lock had been broken for years and they could always sneak inside. It was easy then. Jacob would smile and smile, his white teeth nearly glowing in the dark, and he would hold her and love her and smile and smile.

That was why Bella hadn't already given Jacob the papers. She remembered how he used to smile, back when they thought about SATs and where they could go to be alone. Back when Bella had talked about "U-dub," and Jacob had talked about a promising internship, and they'd had a world of possibilities ahead of them.

Before two blue lines had changed everything.

Bella remembered how she had cried when she looked at those lines, how she had felt all of her plans crumbling around her. She had passed the stick to Jacob, and watched him while he stared at it, and for several long minutes his smile disappeared.

But then he had thrown the stick away and taken her in his arms and held her. "We'll make new plans," he'd whispered to her, and he'd smiled again.

Chloe had been their treasure. She inherited her mother's eyes and her father's smile, and she was fascinated with animals from the first moment she laid eyes on one. Jacob and Bella doted on her, read her books and rocked her to sleep and gushed over her first tooth, her first word, her first step. Jacob took a factory job, and Bella waited tables at the diner. They argued about money and about changing diapers. They took Chloe to the zoo for her third birthday, and watched her giggle in delight, and they smiled and smiled.

Before the black ice. Before the crunch of metal and the shattering of glass.

Before Jacob stopped smiling.

They'd blamed each other. If he hadn't been driving so fast . . . If she hadn't insisted on going out . . . If he hadn't put off replacing the brake pads . . . If she hadn't spent all the money on Christmas presents . . . They'd blamed each other, because Chloe was gone and it had to be somebody's fault.

They'd fought, and when they didn't have any energy left to fight they'd retreated to their corners and sniped at one another. They lived for months in a haze of anger and resentment, and when the dust finally settled there was him and there was her, but there was no them and nobody smiled.

Bella spent her time wrapping herself in Chloe's memory. She would sit on her daughter's bed, hugging her little books and crying into the stuffed tiger with the chewed tail and the missing left eye. She wanted to talk about her all the time. But Jacob didn't want to talk about her. Jacob wanted to move on. He resented Bella for the constant painful reminders. Bella resented him for wanting to forget.

She put on weight. He lost some. He started taking evening classes so he would have a reason to be away from her. She started working nights so she wouldn't have to sleep in the bed next to him. But sometimes they still ended up at home together, and they would sit on opposite ends of the couch and let the television fill up the space between them.

Bella rolled onto her stomach and reached for the hidden papers again, fingering and stroking the softened edges. Their marriage had dissolved long ago. Now they just had to admit it.

She heard the front door close and the sound of Jacob's footsteps outside the bedroom door. She drew her hand back, wrapping the blanket closer around her and pretending to be asleep as the door swung open. For a moment there was silence, no telltale squeak of the floorboards to alert her that Jacob had stepped into the room, and she could feel his eyes on her. She wished he would go away.

But he didn't. The floorboards squeaked and the bed dipped, and then he was sidling up behind her like he used to, wrapping his arm around her in the way that had once made her feel so safe. She fought the urge to cringe away from him.

"Are you awake?" he whispered, his words barely more than a breath, but somehow deafening in the silent room.

She lay still and silent making sure her breathing was even.

"I miss you, Bella," he said in that same soft, reverberating whisper.

A lump swelled in her throat and she prayed that her body wouldn't betray her. She wanted to pretend she couldn't hear him.

"I know I haven't been much of a husband lately," he continued. "It's so hard . . ."

He trailed off and Bella knew he was thinking of Chloe. That surprised her, and only made the lump in her throat tighten. She had assumed he never thought of Chloe anymore.

She heard Jacob swallow hard, twice, before he spoke again.

"I'm going to try harder, though. I promise. We both deserve better than this."

Her eyes stung and she tried to will the gathering tears not to fall.

Jacob didn't speak for several long moments, and the silence settled over them, heavy and pregnant. Finally he brushed her hair back and leaned down to press a kiss to the crook of her neck. "I love you, Bella," he whispered.

And then the mattress shifted and the floorboards creaked and the bedroom door closed and latched.

Bella turned her face into her pillow and silently released her sobs. She had cried so much lately, until she thought the red would be permanently etched into her eyes and her lips would always taste of salt. But no matter how much she cried, there were always more tears. She couldn't seem to run herself out of grief. For several long minutes she wept into her pillow, and for a few more after that she sniffled and hiccoughed. And when she had finished purging this fresh round of sadness she slipped her hand beneath the mattress again and fingered the feathered edges of the papers between the mattress.

Petition for the Dissolution of Marriage.

Divorce.

It was a black, ominous word.

She should get up now, she thought. She had some errands she needed to run. She had to pick up Jacob's shirts at the dry-cleaner, and she needed to do some grocery shopping. Maybe she would check the price of salmon while she was there. It was Jacob's favorite; he liked it broiled with butter and honey. If she hurried, she could get back in time to have it cooked before he went to bed.

She gripped the pages and wriggled them farther back between the mattress and the box spring, where her fingers couldn't brush the edges unless she pushed her whole hand inside. Maybe she wasn't ready to admit anything yet. Maybe she would wait a little longer, just to see what would happen.

Maybe she would wait to see if Jacob would smile again.


End file.
